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The people who brought you videogame ratings - the Entertainment Software Rating Board - are making them a little more useful to parents. They've created a mobile ratings site for cellphones (http://m.esrb.org), CNET reports. So parents can now access a rating even at point-of-purchase, when pressure from those kid gamers can be intense and a little right info at the fingertips can help. Both the mobile site and the regular Web one also have rating summaries. "The idea," according to CNET, "is to allow parents to see some of the thought process behind the agency's decision" for each game - "the context and relevant content that factored into a game's ESRB rating assignment." The summaries will soon be available for all new games, as well as those rated since July 1. Meanwhile, USATODAY reports that, despite the tough economic times, it could be a record year for videogame sales.

Labels: ESRB, mobile ratings, videogame ratings, videogame summaries

Bullying needs to be detected and addressed early! "By age 24, 60% of identified bullies have a criminal conviction. Young children who were labeled by their peers as bullies required more support from adults, from government agencies, had more court convictions, more alcoholism, more anti-social personality disorders and used more mental health services," according to research by psychology professor Debra Pepler at York University (here's a sample of her work . That's just one of a group of statistics - some disturbing, some calls to action - that Bill Belsey pulled together and distributed to mark this week, Canada's sixth-annual Bullying Awareness Week. A parent and teacher too, Bill is founder of the award-winning Bullying.org and Cyberbullying.ca. Here are some other eye-opening numbers from Dr. Pepler and other Canadian researchers (for more info, see BullyingAwarenessWeek.org):

The headline chosen by the European Commission's QuickLinks blog certainly cuts to the chase: "No Adults Allowed. (Marketers Welcome)." What it links to is a timely New York Times piece about the potential unintended consequences of the age verification that state attorneys general are calling for (consequences that would not please many parents). What the headline refers to is the alleged business model of some of the 2 dozen+ companies who want to help (and involve US schools in helping) verify American children's ages - apparently for the purpose of protecting them online but also reportedly to make a business out of selling data they gather on kids to marketers. Kids' social sites, virtual worlds, and other services would pay the age-verification vendor a "commission for each [child] member" a school signs up; "the [kids'] Web site can then use the data on each child to tailor its advertising," the Times reports. One of the age-verification companies the Times talked to, eGuardian, says kids are exposed to ads anyway (well, in some, not all, kids' sites), it just makes sure they're appropriate. The question is, how can that "appropriate advertising" be guaranteed? There's a pretty sexualized media culture and a lot of obesity in this society anyway, to name only a couple of issues. One of the remarkable things about this piece is the quote at the bottom from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a leading proponent of age verification, saying that verifying kids' ages online to promote marketing to them would be very concerning. This is the first qualifying statement about age verification we've seen from the attorneys general since they started calling for its implementation more than two years ago.

Labels: age verification, Blumenthal, Brad Stone, online marketing, online safety education

This bit of pop anthropology in the Financial Times may interest parents: a university student telling an older friend how glad she is not to be a teenager these days. With social-network sites and services, she says, teens are on display 24/7. Sure, they put themselves in that position, but there's a great deal of pressure on them to, she suggests. They not only have to project an image but also protect it by being one-man or one-woman, always-on "PR machines" while also dealing with schoolwork, homework, sports and other extracurriculars, sometimes jobs, etc. "It's driving them all crazy," she told her friend, adding that this is normal. This isn't just "popular kids." But here's what I think everybody (teens, parents, educators, psychologists, etc.) needs to think together about going forward: "And there are so many casualties and nobody talks about it." The casualties of these new norms. And "casualties" doesn't necessarily mean drop-outs from this reality, but whatever impact it has, day-to-day, on young people's emotional and social well-being. [Readers, your comments - here, via email to anne at netfamilynews.org or in the ConnectSafely forum - would be most welcome!] BTW, here's how someone who actually is an "extreme teen" and social-Web PR master does it, according to the New York Times, referring to 18-year-old star singer/songwriter Taylor Swift, "the most remarkable country music breakthrough artist of the decade." Is her very smart, open PR strategy what many teens are emulating (or vice versa!)?

Labels: health risks, online PR, online reputations, reputation management

A conference on cyberbullying last week in Montpelier drew some 300 middle and high school students from all over Vermont, the Rutland Herald reported. Judging by the reporting, it was very effective - a research-based approach that encouraged empathy and gave young people information they could act on (along those lines, see our new "Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying" at ConnectSafely.org).

The keynote was given by John Halligan, father of Ryan Halligan, who was 13 when he killed himself after being bullied online. Telling Ryan's story "made the students think twice about online communications," according to the Herald. Halligan told the students that he believed it's up to them, not adults, to stop cyberbullying. [Here's an interview PBS's "Frontline" producers did with Mr. Halligan for its "Growing Up Online" documentary, which you and your kids can watch in full by clicking in the upper-right-hand corner of its home page.]

Phil Fogelman, an education director at the Anti-Defamation League, which sponsored the conference, also spoke. He explained that the social and emotional impact of cyberbullying on people can be "devastating." "The students gathered in small groups for two hours of workshops, identifying the most common forms of cyberbullying, which include sharing secret or embarrassing information about someone, sending cruel messages, spreading rumors online and posing as someone else," according to the Burlington Free Press.

Speakers taught students how to recognize and address cyberbullying when it happens. The Herald reported that "most of the students said that when they encountered cyberbullying they tried to remain uninvolved. Instructors said it was important not to participate, but also said being a bystander is not enough. Students were urged to report cases of cyberbullying to an adult."

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Believe it or not, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie are 39 years old this year, and now there's a Sesame Street not only in 140 countries but also on the Web. It'll soon launch its YouTube channel with 100 video clips from the TV show, Reuters reports. Like YouTube, Hulu will also Hulu, an online video venture between News Corp and General Electric Co's NBC, will host 100 segments, and in addition "30 other segments featuring celebrity actor guests such as Julia Roberts and Laurence Fishburne." Reuters adds that full episodes of the show can be downloaded and purchased from iTunes "from season 35 and onward for $1.99." The first 10 seasons of Sesame Street are available only on disk.

Labels: Hulu, iTunes, Sesame Street, video sharing, YouTube

Actually they're far from being mere viewers or consumers, and they're not just MTV's. But MTV came up with some fascinating data that certainly confirms no teen is just viewing even when the TV's on, YPulse reports. Certainly don't forget the tiny screen. Nearly half - 47% of 9-to-17-year-olds surveyed by MTV - said their social lives would end without texting. A full half (50%) use mobile texting and the same percentage "consider their mobile as an entertainment platform," YPulse adds. The latter figure is not surprising, because it seems to me that socializing is just as entertaining as any entertainment content on a given device. As far as multitasking goes, here are a few more numbers: 31% of teens' "home Internet activity occurs while watching TV"; 45% IM or text friends while watching TV shows at the same time in their respective homes; and 35% have participated in or played games that they were informed about while watching TV shows."

Labels: MTV, social media research

There are some great virtual worlds out there for kids' entertainment, but nothing quite holds a candle to Teen Second Life for its collective-creativity tools. Until Lego Universe arrives on the scene, says Barry Joseph, director of Global Kids' Online Leadership Program, in his blog. In the organization's blog he refers to it as "a bright light in the distance," he wrote in the organization's blog, point to Lego Universe, expected to debut sometime next year. Apparently it'll be virtual world and massively multiplayer game combined. The reason why it could offer TSL serious competition is Lego's track record for collective creativity online and the fact that it has a tangible, well-known Real Life connection: those little plastic bricks (you may be interested in my interview way back in 1998 with Robbie Berg, whose work at the MIT Media Lab contributed to the development of Lego MindStorms). Joseph's post includes a video preview of what Lego Universe will look like, including one that depicts "one avatar building a car followed by a second avatar collaborating on its construction." With this game/world, parents probably will quickly find the same kind of comfort level they found with Lego Star Wars. In that case, little Lego people running around with light sabers just can't seem very violent; in the case of a virtual world, this environment's more like ClubPenguin than Teen Second Life. Building and leveraging RL Lego fans will have to make up the difference for teens. [See also "Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users."]

Labels: Barry Joseph, Global Kids, Lego Universe, Teen Second Life

Canadians have definitely taken to social networking. "Some 17 million have a Facebook profile, 4.5 million are on MySpace, 14.5 million visit YouTube every month, and 3.6 million upload photos to the sharing site Flickr.com," the Toronto Globe & Mail reports. It doesn't even mention home-grown Nexopia, based in Edmonton, with about 1.4 million users. The Globe & Mail article (and accompanying Q&A with readers) is about privacy concerns regardless of users' ages ("social networkers shape their identity with these sites, essentially broadcasting their public image around the world"), pointing to a problem social sites are dealing with wherever their users are: "Many social-networking sites have privacy systems in place, but many users ignore them, only to find out - too late - that they shouldn't have left their photos, blog postings and personal information available for anyone to discover." Here are Part 2, "When a widget attacks your profile," and Part 3, "Underage kids flock to social networks." South of the border, an article in the Kansas City Star suggests this "public explosion in self-documentation" is a generational thing. Is it?

Labels: Facebook, Flickr, international social networking, MySpace

It's the first known arrest for the murder of an avatar. Japanese police arrested a 43-year-old woman in southern Japan for murdering the avatar of a 33-year-old man in northern Japan, Fox News reports. Their avatars had been married in MapleStory, a virtual world that has seven Asian editions (Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc.) as well as editions for North America, Europe, and most recently Brazil . She was so angry upon hearing of the avatars' "sudden divorce" that she allegedly used his log-in info, obtained in happier times, to kill his avatar off. "The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world," a Japanese official told Fox, but was arrested and "jailed [after being transported 620 miles north to Sapporo] on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data." If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison or a fine of up to $5,000. Teacher Vicki Davis in Atlanta uses this story as an example of how "online behavior has offline consequences" and how technology is not the issue (see TechLearning.com): "So many schools are punishing the portal, the website, the tool," she writes. "It is not the tool's fault that humans misbehave. That is human nature. Hold the humans accountable who do wrong things in these spaces." I think she's absolutely right but also hope people's take-away on the Japanese story is that the woman was arrested for hacking not murdering an avatar.

Labels: virtual worlds

...in "real life," or both? CNN focuses on the Net, saying that "though there are any number of bloggers and commenters who attempt to keep their postings and responses on a civil level, all too often interactive Web sites descend into ad hominem attacks, insults and plain old name-calling. Indeed, there are even whole sites devoted to venting, such as justrage.com ... and mybiggestcomplaint.com." It's exactly what digital-citizenship instruction needs to address, but remember too that disagreement can be respectful and anger ok if not hurtful. Civility, certainly, but also anger management, empathy, critical thinking, and thicker-skin development are all good topics for digital-citizenship discussion. Here's CNN's sidebar on anger in Second Life.

Labels: cyberbullying, online anger, online rants

Sheer critical mass could be one reason why Chinese doctors had to come up with a definition of Internet addiction. Net users aged 18-30 make up half of China's estimated online population of some 250 million people, and 10% of that group of Netizens are addicted (about 70% of them male), China Daily reports. That's 12.5 million addicts. The announcement, by Dr. Tao Ran of Beijing's Military General Hospital, was one of two firsts for China: the first diagnostic definition of Internet addiction "amid efforts to address an increasing number of psychological problems that reportedly result from Internet overuse" and China's first Internet addiction clinic. "China could become the first country to classify Internet addiction as a clinical disorder and plans to lead the world by registering the condition with the World Health Organisation," the Times of London reports. Symptoms include "yearning to get back online, mental or physical distress, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping." Dr. Tao "classifies as addicts those who spend at least six hours online a day and have shown at least one symptom in the past three months." He said 80% can be cured with treatment that "usually lasts about three months." The Times adds that "research by the internet media company InterActiveCorp showed that 42% of Chinese youngsters polled felt addicted to the internet, compared with 18% in the US."

Labels: China, International research, Internet addiction

New Hampshire is the latest state where there have been reports of teens passing around via cellphones nude photos of peers. "Students at Salem High School were allegedly circulating graphic photos of fellow, underage female students among themselves via cell phone, prompting a police investigation," the New Hampshire Union Leader reports. Police said photos of at least two girls were disseminated by both boys and girls to a "significant number of students" but not throughout the entire student body of 2,300. The Caledonian Record later reported that "police, prosecutors and school officials ... are warning students that ... taking, possessing and distributing explicit pictures of children is a crime." The school held an assembly Monday night to inform students that the photos constituted "pornography," the Eagle-Tribune reported, leaving "at least one parent" upset that it did more to spread rumors than provide facts. For stories in other states about this trend, see "Naked photo-sharing trend" and "Nude photo-sharing: Q from a family that's been there."

Labels: cellphone safety, High School, naked photo sharing, New Hampshire, Salem

It appears some bullies literally feel better when viewing others suffering. "Brain scans of teens with a history of aggressive bullying behavior suggest that they may actually get pleasure out of seeing someone else in pain," Reuters cites researchers at the University of Chicago as finding. Though unsurprising to victims of bullying, probably, the finding is not actually what the researchers expected. "The prevailing view" is that bullies are "cold and unemotional," while this indicates that they actually "care very much" about the impact of their behavior, they told Reuters. For the first time, the researchers used fMRI to watch the brain activity in eight 16-to-18-year-olds with aggressive conduct disorder while showing them "video clips of someone inflicting pain on another person." They did the same with a control group of eight teens with no aggression problems. "In the aggressive teens, areas of the brain linked with feeling rewarded - the amygdala and ventral striatum - became very active when they observed pain being inflicted on others. But they showed little activity in an area of the brain involved in self-regulation - the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction - as was seen in the control group." What this indicates, as eScience News put it, is that "some aggressive youths' natural empathetic impulse may be disrupted in ways that increase aggression." The researchers told Reuters their study - entitled "Atypical Empathetic Responses in Adolescents with Aggressive Conduct Disorder: A functional MRI Investigation" and appearing in the journal Biological Psychology - wasn't conclusive; a larger one is needed. [This just in: a New York Times blog post about this study, with interesting reader comments following it.]

Labels: aggressive behavior, brain scans, bullying, fMRI, MRI, University of Chicago